in this issue Views From the Top From The Font Upcoming Meeting Topics Goodbye Office '97 Special Interest Group (SIG) March Board Minutes PC3 forum Web Potpourri

Getting the Most Out of Your CD/DVD "Burner
The program will be presented by Galen Bolin

Views From the Top

Richard Kinkel, President

As I sit down to write Views From the Top, I'm saying to myself: "Self, its spring already" and I would rather be outside, instead of writing "Views". Spring however, does make me think of spring cleaning, which makes me think of cleaning my computer. Don't forget; make sure all those temporary files are purged. I do that to my computer at least once a week. Now for some club business, at the last board meeting we decided to increase the dues from $5/year to $15/year and that's still a pretty good bargain, considering what you get for your money. You get a professionally produced newsletter (thank Keith for that). You get great programs, community service projects, and high quality SIGS.

The SIGS we have going now are: Bill Barnes-MS Office SIG, Richard Kinkel's-Digital Photography SIG and Paul Reiss's-Internet SIG. You can always pick up an interesting tip from Paul at his SIG. Additionally; you can thank Galen for our next program which will be on burning CD's. If you want to learn everything you always wanted to know about this subject, be sure to come to our next general meeting. As you can recall, at the last two general meetings we refurnished about a half dozen computers. We are in the process of finding a recipient for them. If you have any ideas we would like to hear from you. Just go to pc3.org and log on to the clubs forum and give us your input. You can also get your technical problems answered by visiting the forum. Post your questions and they will get answered promptly.

Now back to spring cleaning my computer. What I do on a regular basis is:
1) delete everything in my temporary internet folder
2) delete all my cookies
3) delete all files under my user name in my temp folder
4) defrag my hard drive and
5) create a restore point.
Now that my computer is squeaky clean, I think I'll go outside and enjoy this beautiful weather I'll see you at the next meeting.

Go to the PC Club's Website

	From The Font
Keith Wales, Sr. As Richard said in "View From the Top" here it is spring already, what do you mean already. It was long cold snowy winter and I for one am very glad it is gone. But here we are starting a new PCCC year with a lot of new and a lot of old so let's get this in perspective. The Old, also known as the establishment. The officers Richard is back as president. If GWB could turn this economy around the way Richard has turned this organization around we would be at 100% employment and every business in the world would be trying to find a place to build a plant here. Bill Barnes is back as an elected member of the Executive Board as Vice President. Bill has been a tireless worker for this organization long before I joined and it is good to have him back on the board. Pam Wales is back a Treasurer, I think this is a fourth term for her in this position. I am starting my third term as editor and I have seen a big change, going from the printed newsletter to the electronic one. I still have a lot to learn on this new format and I hope to have the time this year to do some new and different things with this publication. If anyone has any suggestions or wants to volunteer to do articles they are always welcome. The New also known a fresh blood Pat Rogers is our new Secretary this is a very important job and I am sure Pat will come to the board meeting with extra pencils to keep all the note of the important things discussed. Bob Carraway is continuing as our Membership Chairman and Jack Lapointe & Loren Dobosy are continuing to share Publicity. All three started their jobs last year and I am sure we will see more great things form them this year. The Final New is the change in dues. Starting with our new year on 1 April dues are being changed to $15.00 for an individual member and $20.00 for (2) family members. Over the last two years the club has run at a negative cash flow but now with our future more secure we need to get back on a financially sound footing. Well enough for this month I hope to make the meeting as it sound like a very good one. I have never been to any presentation put on by Galen that was not over the top in quantity and quality. Editor Bytes & Bits »

	Upcoming Meeting Topics
May What is New in Office 2003 By Bill Barnes, Office SIG Director June To Be Determined What would you like to see

	Goodbye Office '97
Bill Barnes, PCCC I've been using Microsoft Office 97 since, well, 1998. As late as early 2002 I was still installing '97 as my preferred version of office. As of this month, I no longer regularly use Office '97. When we first installed '97, we complained that it took 70 MB! That was two to ten or more times disc space than the biggest programs we used to install. But in an integrated package Office became an indispensable accessory for any business. And it crushed the competition. Lotus 123 and Lotus WordPro (ne AmiPro) have essentially disappeared. We have seen the complete marginalization of Quattro Pro. Even venerable WordPerfect is popular in an ever-shrinking niche. Now I use 3 newer versions of Office on the various computers I sit down to. Office '97 exists on only a couple of my computers that I turn on just for a special legacy program. I had to rebuild my primary computer this month and decided to install only Office 2000. The feature I will miss most in Office '97 is that it can save a relatively plain HTML version of a document. Word did a nice job of converting a word processing page into a web page. I could then edit the code of the file and actually follow the HTML. Now when you "Save As" HTML, the file is bloated with all sorts of commands that mean nothing to the web, but are just preparation for the future of Office Online. Goodbye Office '97. We both must move on. It will be even longer until I ditch my last computer running Win98.

	Special Interest Group (SIG)
Special Interest Group Next week will be our SIG week and we will have several during that week. The schedule is as follows: Office SIG Monday, April 12, 2004, 7:00pm CompUSA, South Boulevard and I-485 Digital Camera SIG Tuesday, April 13, 2004, 7:00pm CompUSA, South Boulevard and I-485 Internet SIG Thursday, April 15, 2004, 7:00pm CompUSA, South Boulevard and I-485 Keep watching the SIG Listings for the announcement of the beginning of the NEW: WEB DESIGN SIG Coming soon to a location near you. SIG Calendar »

	March Board Minutes
Bill Barnes, Vice President   The PCCC Board met March 22 at The Ole Smokehouse on Montford. Attending were Richard Kinkel , President; Bill Barnes , Vice President; Pam Wales, Treasurer; Keith Wales, Editor; Bob Carraway, Membership; ; and Galen Bolin and Paul Reiss, SIG coordinators. Pat Rogers, Secretary and Ted Hessberg, Esteemed Senior were each celebrating daughters' birthdays. Welcome to our newly elected or reelected Board. If you missed the election at the March general meeting and want to join or challenge the Board, you're welcome to participate. There are an infinite number of ex officio positions available. Bob Carraway moved that we establish a discounted dues rate for additional members of the same family. After much discussion, family members will be welcomed in the club for $5.00 each after the initial member's $15.00. Follow our continuing discussion on this and other matters on the discussion forum. Don't forget, we will soon purge our mailing list to eliminate those who don't even read this newsletter. To do that, those of you actually reading this MUST update your subscription. Either enter the email address where you received this mailing in the "Join the PCCC mailing list" box on the website or click "Update your profile" at the bottom of this message. Once you get to the registration page, check that it is your email address listed, update your personal information, and be sure you check the box Resubscribe 2004. If you do not update your information and Resubscribe, you will not receive these mailings after we purge the list. If you then want to continue to receive our newsletter, please rejoin from pc3.org. Our (my) apology for those who attempted to update their mailing list info from the link in the body of last month's newsletters. Despite extensive testing before release, the link did not work for many people in actual use. (Hey -- we're just trying to keep up with industry standards.) There are still two methods to update the info. The next "Eatin' before the (general) meetin' " is April 8 at Pepperoni's Pizza in Park Rd. Shopping Center. The next Board meeting is at the Smokehouse April 19. February Treasurers Report Beginning Balance......................................$2552.51 Income (From Memberships) .........................$160.00 Expenses (Newsletter & Bank Charge)...............$55.34 Current Balance.........................................$2657.17 Submitted By Pam Wales Join the Forum! »

	PC3 forum
Bill Barnes, PCCC You all check the forum on the club website every week, don't you. You've never been to the forum? Shame. You didn't know the club had a website? Just click the "Go To Forum" link at the bottom of the page. I won't quote the messages here, but will tell you some topics you're missing out on. We have conferences on "Help Desk", "Service Project", "Board Discussions", the "Web Design/HTML" SIG, and "General Discussion". At the Help Desk you can ask technical questions and get answers from others in the club or cyberspace who may have some knowledge on your topic. Recent questions range from not seeing emailed pictures and how to empty the Temp folder to a problem with a .DLL for a specific professional program. Not all of these got a resolution, but they opened discussion. The Service Project is a place to see immediate updates on our project to recondition computers. Board Discussions allows you to watch over and join in the Board's deliberations between the monthly Board dinner. Recently there's been an opportunity to put your two cents' into a lively debate over the adjustment of our dues. If there's demand, each SIG can have a place to cover topics of specific interest. Right now, Dewey is soliciting ideas for what we want to cover in his Web Design/HTML SIG. General Discussion lets you talk about anything computer. Suggest a program topic (if you want to present one, please contact board@pc3.org directly). Unload, or look for some old equipment. Confess the location of the WMDs. Just about any topic is welcome here. If you can't find the forum from PC3.org, just click the link below. We're waiting to respond (we don't promise an answer) to your questions, hear (we don't promise to listen) your gripes or plaudits, or consider your for sale. If you come back frequently, and we hope you all do, please register (click "User") so we can honor your insightful writing. Go to the forum »

	Web Potpourri
AOL Tips Submitted by Bob Carraway & Dr. Paul Reiss Email Tip By Dr. Reiss There may be times when you want to send the same e- mail to a lot of different people, but you don't necessarily want everyone to know which e-mail addresses received the e-mail. By using parenthesis around an e-mail address inside of the "Copy To:" box, you can hide that address from everyone else. We do advise that you send a test e-mail with this feature before using it, as making a mistake could be potentially embarrassing. Un-Spamming  By Bob Carraway Tired of the spam emails you are getting? I use America Online version 9.0 and my favorite feature for filtering incoming emails is to allow only those email addresses in my address book into my inbox. All others are sent to the AOL spam folder. This allows me to visually scan the "spam folder" contents once a week and recover any desirable emails. I then delete the real spam with one click of the mouse button. To filter out undesirable emails from ever reaching your AOL inbox in the first place, this is what to do: 1. Click on the Mail drop-down menu on the Toolbar which opens a menu 2. Click on Block Unwanted Mail 3. In the "Control Who I Get Mail From" area click on the radio button that reads, "Allow mail only from People I Know." 4. At the bottom of this window click on the radio button next to "Delivered to the Spam Folder." 5. Click on the Save button and you are done. No more junk emails are coming to your inbox! 6. Once every week or two you should check your Spam Folder for any desired emails. Click on the button, "This is not spam" and then delete the rest of the emails from the folder. Send me your favorite sites and you to could be in the spotlight next month.

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